LAS CRUCES >> New Mexico State University is spending slightly less this year on salaries despite an ongoing push by the university to boost faculty salaries within range of the median salaries for the university's peer institutions.

The $205.7 million spent on salaries this year is down from $207 million about this time last year, according to a Sun-News analysis of NMSU data requested under the state Inspection of Public Records Act.

Several mechanisms are at play as the university strives to improve employee pay. State-provided funding has been relatively scarce in recent years, and the university has raised tuitions and cut budgets to compensate faculty and staff — a goal the school deemed a top priority in 2013.

State funding provided most NMSU employees with a slight pay increase this year — around 1 percent for most employees. However, those raises were largely offset by increases in employee contributions to retirement and insurance, resulting in little to no increase in take-home pay.

Raises varied some among faculty members as the university implemented merit-based pay increases for the first time. Those raises were tied to educators' annual evaluations.

Top earners

President Garrey Carruthers remains the highest-paid university employee, with an annual salary of $385,000. That figure will remain the same until at least 2018, as stipulated by his contract.

"My salary has been fixed, from the day I took this job," said Carruthers. "In my contract, and at my request, my salary can not be increased for the first five years. What you'll see going forward is that there will be no additional compensation above and beyond what top executives are making in the coming year."

Carruthers said that pay ceiling is in line with his compensation plans for the university.

"Given where I am in my life cycle, I don't believe that I should be requesting any more for my own salary when we have these other needs — particularly with faculty and staff," Carruthers said.

By comparison, University of New Mexico President Robert Frank earns $362,136 per year.

For the third time, NMSU's top 10 earners all make more than $200,000 a year. Their combined salaries total more than $2.6 million — which remains essentially flat from last year.

More employees than ever are earning $100,000 or more, including deans, associate professors, department heads, coaches and others. This year, 275 employees earn at least $100,000; that's up from nearly 250 last year.

Reaching the median

Two years ago, the university committed to bringing faculty compensation to within 10 percent of the median pay for similar positions among the university's peer institutions — a group of 16 universities, including UNM, Texas Tech University and the University of Texas–El Paso.

"This is the completion of a three-year project," said Carruthers. "We hired a company called Mercer, a consulting company on salaries and benefits, and they're the ones who helped us establish the medians, by rank and discipline, and helped us establish this program."

Carruthers said the plan for non-tenure-track professors will take four years, rather than three.

Just how the university moves forward with the final installment of the median market adjustment hangs on the outcome of a Board of Regents meeting scheduled for Monday.

"We will ask the regents to approve our tuition, fees and budget for the next year," said Carruthers. "The amount of money at play here is about $2.2 million. There is a way that we can do it without raising tuition and fees, but we would have to cut budgets severely to get there."

Budget cuts

Regardless, Carruthers said some form of budget cuts at the university are imminent.

"We're going to cut budgets anyway, whether it's tied to this (the pay raises) or not," said Carruthers. "We're recommending to the regents somewhere north of a $9 million reduction in our expenditures for 2015-16."

The institution has seen a protracted decline in enrollment in the past three years.

"We need to recalibrate the university, recognizing that enrollment is going to be flat. At best, we may see slight increases. We're not going to enjoy the good old days, when enrollment was going up 3 or 4 percent. The demographics in New Mexico just do not support that. The population in New Mexico is flat; the graduation rate in New Mexico high schools is down. Plus we have seven universities and 22 two-year colleges they can go to. There's just not that many students prepared to go to college," Carruthers said.

On March 12, the university instituted a hiring moratorium, expected to save $1.25 million in the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends in June. The moratorium, however, will remain in effect until it is deemed no longer necessary.

No legislative raises

Last year, the university instituted a merit-based system for faculty and staff pay raises, which tied compensation to annual evaluations. This year, however, the state Legislature did not authorize pay raises for state employees. A decline in the state's tax revenue, driven largely by the fall of oil and gas prices, prevented legislators from considering those raises.

"Six months ago, our plan was to ask the Legislature for a 3 percent increase in compensation for faculty and staff, across all of higher education," said Carruthers. "But when the price of oil plummeted, and natural gas started easing down, we timidly asked for 1 percent. But the Legislature didn't even bother to talk about the 1 percent."

Faculty perspective

"The administration's effort toward getting all faculty into the median salary range among our peer institutions is a very positive move, and it has been very well-received by the faculty," said Stuart Munson-McGee, chairman of the NMSU Faculty Senate. Faculty constitutes nearly 30 percent of NMSU employees.

While the faculty is, overall, pleased with the move, Munson-McGee said it remains unclear whether the university is committed to keep pace with its peers.

"The question among faculty is, 'Will we still be able to stay there?' We're going to get there, but as our peers move up over the next 10 years, will we be able to do the same thing? Or are we going to be stuck, because the Legislature is not providing enough money to increase salaries, when other states are," said Munson-McGee.

Munson-McGee said that, with legislative funding remaining stagnate and enrollment on the decline, the university is being "cautionary and proactive," to prepare for a decrease in the system's operating budget.

Moving forward

Because NMSU is planning to tighten its belt systemwide, the university is exercising caution with upcoming hires, according to Andrew Peña, assistant vice president for human resources.

"Certainly we'll be a little more conscious of our positions," Peña said. "We're looking at positions that are currently posted, and following those through. Any new positions, both on the faculty and staff side, we're evaluating. I think there has been some additional diligence in reviewing positions, moving forward."

Much of where the university goes from here will depend on the budget, tuition and fees approved at Monday's meeting of the Board of Regents.

Carruthers is hopeful that the university can find a way to follow through with the commitment to faculty, pertaining to median pay. However, the proposed operating budget will likely be notably smaller than in years past.

As for tuitions, NMSU had the third-lowest in-state tuition, at $6,220 per year, among its peer institutions in 2013-14, the latest period for which data is available. NMSU's annual tuition remains substantially lower than the average of its peer group, $7,736. UNM's annual tuition was $6,846 for the same year.